Gravure cylinders are used for coating liquid compositions on moving supports. The amount of liquid deposited by the gravure cylinder is a function of the recessed cells on the surface of the cylinder. A traditional strategy towards the design of an engraving for the gravure cylinder has been reliance on a large inventory of finished cylinders having different engraved cell patterns, sizes and shapes. The proper lay down of the liquid coating composition is determined empirically, by either trying a number of cylinders, or using cylinders that worked previously. In trying to achieve a desired lay down of a new coating composition, an engineer would typically specify a cylinder type to an engraver and say "make it like this cylinder except . . . ". Although somewhat successful, the shortcomings of this method are the reliance upon empirical experimentation and the ability of a single source engraver service to make it "like another cylinder". The engraver would empirically change the cell depth to increase or decrease fluid deposit lay down with a minimum concern for cell geometry effect on coating quality.
The present invention is a method that solves the above described shortcomings. The invention allows one to specify to an engraver the proper parameters needed to engrave a cylinder that will produce the desired coating coverage.